Weight and Learning
Weight loss or weight gain can affect your child's ability to learn based on a few things. The biggest factor is nutrition, and whether your child is cutting calories to lose weight, or eating the empty calories found in sugary, high-fat foods, there's a good chance he won't be getting enough nutrients to feed the brain optimally. Exercise also stimulates the mind, and kids who gain weight often don't get enough.
Obesity is usually the result of a combination of poor nutrition and lack of exercise, which means it packs a double whammy as far as learning goes. Obesity impacts children in a lot of negative ways, but its effect on your child's cognitive learning abilities are the least likely to be reversible. High blood pressure also affects cognitive learning and can come as a result of obesity.
Nutrition
A poor diet lacking in nutrients is partly responsible for weight loss in some children, and weight gain in others. Weight loss is the result of significantly cutting back on healthy eating, while weight gain is usually caused by highly processed foods full of sugars, chemicals, refined ingredients and saturated fats. In either case, it can have an effect on your child's mental abilities.
A study conducted at Harvard Medical School in November 2007 showed that students who ate a healthy diet scored noticeably higher on cognitive assessment tests than those that didn't. The healthy eaters consumed high amounts of natural lean proteins and complex carbohydrates, and low amounts of sugar and processed foods. The others had diets high in pre-packaged foods containing processed sugars, chemical additives, refined ingredients and saturated fats.
The Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) released a report in 2006 based on various other studies, and concluded that a child's BMI, or body mass index, is related to his academic performance. As a result, overweight children tend not to do as well at school as normal weight children. The report goes on to say that kids' brain development is impacted by what they eat, and poor nutrition in the early part of life can result in a low IQ and emotional problems.
Brain Food
Some foods enhance brain power and learning more than others. Avoid processed and refined foods, and go for brain foods such as fish, eggs, dark green vegetables, flax seed, and whole grains like quinoa and whole grain rice. Iron deficiency also reduces cognitive function, so serve healthy sources of iron like extra-lean cuts of beefs. Beef also has a lot of zinc, which is great for improving memory.
Exercise
In September 2005, a report was published by the Medical College of Georgia's Georgia Prevention Institute, which showed that exercise was directly related to cognitive learning ability. Obese children who became physically active for up to 20 minutes more than usual, three times a week, got a significantly higher score on a cognitive assessment test than obese kids who didn't become more active. The exercisers were better at solving problems, and retaining information they were taught. So not only is active physical playing fun for kids, but it makes both their bodies and their minds healthier.
Hypertension
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, also affects learning, and tends to be a problem in children who are overweight. Marc Lande, M.D., a pediatric nephrologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, conducted a study and published a corresponding paper in the "Journal of Pediatrics" in February 2009. The study shows that kids with hypertension have difficulty with complicated, goal-oriented tasks, planning, and memory. If they have high blood pressure and are also obese, the chances of having anxiety and depression are greater, and that affects their cognitive ability to deal with complex situations.
Lande says up to 10 percent of all obese children have high blood pressure, and those numbers continue to climb as obesity rates soar. According to his initial tests, treating obese children for hypertension can help improve cognitive function.
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